


Five Times Enjolras Was Totally Oblivious, Plus The One Time He Worked It Out

by Dorkangel



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexual Enjolras, Elementary School, Eventual Enjolras/Grantaire, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, High School, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Kindergarten, Les Amis as modern-day pride protestors, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform, Les Amis de l'ABC Shenanigans, M/M, Oblivious Enjolras, One-Sided Enjolras/Grantaire, Pining Grantaire, Substance Abuse, That's Just Grantaire tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 10:38:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4016596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorkangel/pseuds/Dorkangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras and 'R have been best friends forever. The thing is that Enjolras manages somehow to not notice the enormous crush Grantaire has always had on him.<br/>Until he does notice.<br/>(It takes him a while, though).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Enjolras Was Totally Oblivious, Plus The One Time He Worked It Out

**Author's Note:**

> Enjolras is asexual but not aromatic here, just oblivious. I headcqnon him as either, depending.  
> And 'R is bi.  
> And 'Ponine might not appear much, but she's just done. With everything.

 

1.  
'Petulant' is not an uncommon expression for a five year old to be wearing, in fairness. It was just that the specific combination of frustrated confusion and exasperation on Enjolras's face as he marched inside was so absurdly hilarious that Mme Mabeuf was struggling not to laugh.  
"Courf' and 'Ferre are talking about _girls_." he huffed, perplexed, and collapsed down into one of the beanbags in a state of emotional exhaustion. His shining eyes swivelled to focus pleading on his teacher before he spoke again. "Girls have _cooties_."  
"I don't like girls." piped up the only other little boy still inside, discarding one broken yellow crayon and grabbing another with a pudgy hand, and Enjolras's head shot up hopefully.  
"Really, 'R?"  
"Uh huh."  
When Mme Mabeuf looked, she could see that what he had been abusing the crayons to draw was yet another stick figure with a halo of blonde squiggles for curls. So Grantaire was drawing Enjolras. Again.  
"What do you like?"  
"Um..." The darker boy shrugged, pausing for a moment in the comparatively painstaking doodle of his friend. "Dinosaurs. And trucks."  
The blonde one nodded sagely, just in time not to hear Grantaire add a quiet, "And boys."  
"I just don't get it! C'mon, 'R, let's go play sandcastle."  
The pair of them rushed outside, Enjolras telling Grantaire to guard the castle so he could be a rebel and destroy it, and if Mme Mabeuf noticed a little red scribble at the corner of the drawing that was undoubtedly meant to be a love heart, she didn't mention it to anyone.

2.  
Talking about the Ancient Greek Gods with M Valjean had very quickly devolved into a long discussion about which god or goddess would be best to make out with.  
Why he had ever wanted to work with twelve year olds, he didn't know. It wasn't that they didn't respect him; just that any escape from the absolute tyranny of M Thernardier was, in their minds, an excuse to talk.  
"Aphrodite." Feuilly was nodding. "Definitely Aphrodite."  
"I don't know, maybe Artemis-"  
"Artemis was a lesbian, you dumb twat-"  
"Language!" called Valjean, having otherwise given up on censoring their conversation.  
"Persephone."  
"No, Hades'd kill you-"  
At the front, Enjolras was just (predictably) looking confused.  
"How the hell did we get to this kind of conversation?" he murmured to the dark, curly head on the table next to him, and received a vaguely coherent grunt.  
"What about you, Grantaire?" smiled Valjean over the general anarchy. "Which deity would you choose?"  
There was a long-suffering sigh from Grantaire, and then he raised his head blearily and shrugged.  
"Apollo."

Valjean wouldn't have made anything of that answer, had he not heard the other boys calling Enjolras 'Apollo'.

3.  
'Subtle' wasn't Enjolras's forte. _Forte_ was more his forte, and sometimes Grantaire thought that all the visionary intellect in his friend's mind was taking up all his storage and had expelled such irrelevantly mundane necessities as common sense or self-preservation.  
Which presumably was why the idiot had thought it was a good idea to wear a pride t-shirt to a high school.  
By the time Grantaire skidded around the cornerback the corridor, Enjolras was being thrown into a wall of lockers, his vividly blonde head hitting them with a sickening crunch.  
"You proud now?" snarled one of the dicks holding his shirt. "Faggot."  
"Leave him alone!"  
It wasn't Grantaire that shouted. He was frozen in utter shock and terror, and it was only by the time that Combeferre had been thrown to the floor in the process of trying to dislodge the aforementioned douchebag that he snapped out of it and rushed forward.  
"Don't touch him!"  
"Why not?" growled the closest kid to him, shoving him backwards. "You his _boyfriend_ or something?"  
Enjolras had this dazed look on his face, like this was some kind of awful dream sequence, because of course he did, because Enjolras didn't understand how the regular world worked outside of the idealised utopia world he had apparently constructed inside his head. Or it might have been because of the blood he was losing out of the back of his skull.  
Grantaire swallowed, hard, and then stared him straight in the eye so 'Ferre has a chance to extract Enjolras.  
"No. Just drop it, ok? Just leave it."  
He wasn't not the biggest kid, or the most muscled. But fuck if Grantaire didn't knock everyone on their asses every time they did boxing in PE, and everyone knew he was dangerous.  
The dick hesitated a moment, weighing up his odds, and then scoffed slightly.  
"Yeah, whatever."

He found the pair of them in the bathrooms, Combeferre pressing a bunch of damp tissues to their Apollo's head and countering his hisses of pain with admonishments of 'It's your own fault you stupid fuck'.  
"R!" smiled Enjolras, the second he saw him. "They're not coming after us?"  
Grantaire couldn't find words, so he just shook his head and pulled his hoodie off to hand to his friend. Luckily, he was smart enough to obediently put it on.  
"Thank you."  
There wasn't enough time to deflect Enjolras; before Grantaire could move, spindly arms had been thrown around him and 'Ferre was sighing to himself.  
"You're a great friend, R."  
_Yeah. A friend- and just a friend._  
He forced a smile onto his face and clapped Enjolras on the back. "Just try not to get killed, Monsieur Activist."

4.  
There was some kind of irony in the fact that they had all decided to go and get drunk to celebrate the graduation of Joly, a hypochondriac who refused point blank to drink. He was all too pleased to sit in the corner and worry, but it was the principle of the thing that bothered Enjolras.  
He was explaining the communist manifesto, in a very vague and hazy way, to the bartender when Bousett and Jehan caught up to him, red faced and giggling like little kids.  
"Enj! Enjolras! Enjolras. You have to see this, it's priceless."  
With his extremities somewhat numbed and his head spinning - surely he hadn't be drinking _that_ much? - he allowed them to drag him over to a booth in a dark corner, where he could just about make out...  
Grantaire.  
He shrugged and turned back to Bousett and Jehan with a frown. "And?"  
Jehan's mouth actually, literally dropped open, and they exchanged a look of utter incredulity.  
"R," he began slowly. "Has his tongue down someone's throat."  
Enjolras blinked at them. "...yeah?"  
"Another man." added Bousett. "With blonde, curly hair."  
Unfortunately, Enjolras then had to stumble rapidly to the loos to puke, but even if he hadn't had to, he probably wouldn't have clocked it.  
"They're worse than Marius and Cosette." murmured Jehan, incredulous, and the others had to agree.

5.  
The police weren't exactly their enemies. It was just Inspector Javert that was the problem, him being a pedantic asshole.  
(Who counts hanging pride flags as graffiti and littering, anyway? Dickwad.)  
When they - 'they' being the ABC society, which was basically all the people Enjolras could persuade to try and spur on a 'social revolution' with him - may or may not have accidentally started a riot of some kind, however, _then_ the police could sort of maybe be counted as their enemies. Javert still hated them too, of course.  
Which would explain the guns currently trained on Enjolras.  
Everyone else had stood down. Everyone else had been fucking smart enough not to stand there and yell about equality at the people who were very possibly about to shoot them, and yet the fucking idiot was still there and Grantaire's heart was beating a mile a minute in his anxiety to get up next to him.  
If Enjolras was going to martyr himself, 'R wasn't going to let him do it alone.  
"Babe!" he called, breathless with panic, which in fairness served to shut up his Apollo pretty quick. They could both feel the eyes of the crowds around and the ABC society and the police all burning into them.  
"Babe," he repeated, offering that half-mad grin that had always meant 'Just play along, I've got a plan'. Enjolras, luckily, seemed to pick up on it and allowed Grantaire to throw an arm around his shoulder and draw him a step away from Javert's men and their guns. "Just, calm it, ok? Just breathe."  
He planted one small kiss on one of the taller man's cheekbones - sharp enough to cut yourself on, he'd always joked, except they were just soft, like the rest of Enjolras - and sent a meaningful look towards the confused officers. They seemed to understand, and most of them stood down, shouting at the spectators and protestors that were left to disperse.  
Enjolras was pulled away by Combeferre, Bahorel, and Feuilly before he could start any more trouble.

Later, when everyone had all the scrapes they'd earned in the riot cleaned up and they had unanimously decided that alcohol was the answer, he got a bright grin and a pat on the back from Enjolras, who was wearing his _'Asexual Pirate - Not Interested In Your Booty'_ shirt and pretty much nothing else.  
"Saved my skin, Grantaire," he laughed. "Always been there for me, right, buddy?"  
Grantaire just sighed long-suffering (they had worked out by now that Enjolras was never going to suss out that that was his _you blind dumbass_ sigh) and reached for the alcohol.

+1  
They had gotten the call at three minutes past midnight, from a frantic Joly.  
'R was in the hospital. The doctors had pumped his stomach, but so far they hadn't be able to work out what else he'd taken, and it was hardly a surprise that he had been drinking and doing... other things... what with his break up with Musichetta, but he'd never actually been found unconscious on the streets and been taken to hospital before.  
By the time that Enjolras managed to get out of work and to the hospital, everyone else was already there- and apparently Grantaire was going to be alright.  
"They've given him more drugs than the sorry sod could ever hope to get by himself." scowled Éponine, when he asked her where 'R was. "So, if you want to try and talk to him, feel free. Just don't expect anything he says to make sense."

He probably should have listened to that warning.  
"'R," Joly was saying, still in his scrubs, as Enjolras walked into the room. "Do you know where you are?"  
His answer was an incoherent mumble.  
"Do you know what room you're in?"  
Grantaire blinked a few times, and his eyes - finally - focused on his friend.  
"We're in a room?"  
"Alright," smiled Joly, standing up. "I'm just going to leave you with Enjolras, ok?"  
"Enjolras is here?"  
Grantaire seemed to perk up immediately, delighted.  
"Guy's a bloody idiot," he told the empty air where Joly had been a few moments before. "Who totally fails to notice the most obvious things in the world, but what can you do, we all love him."  
"Really?" asked Enjolras. "What does he not notice? I think he notices a lot."  
Enjolras was actually enjoying himself quite a lot, which seemed fair, with all the puns Grantaire made about him.  
"Oh, he notices all the injustices in the world," waved Grantaire vaguely, his speech slurred. "And all the light and the glory and all. Hasn't noticed the biggest fuckin' injustice on earth, though."  
"No?"  
"Nuh huh."  
"And what is that?"  
"Wanna kiss the silly bastard." groaned Grantaire. "Had a crush on him forever. And he can't goddamn see it."  
Oh.  
_Oh_.  
Well, that changed things. Enjolras caught his friend's hand, and smiled gently.  
"I think he knows now."  
"Really?"  
"How about we talk about it when you wake up, huh?"

Maybe he couldn't see what was apparently right before his eyes. But he had Grantaire to point it out to him.


End file.
